


Terrible Prayer

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Death's Gifts [1]
Category: Highlander
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, GFY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 06:41:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11076126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: Her wolf is dead, and the tempest will follow.





	Terrible Prayer

She sits under a glittering bowl of stars, silence broken only by the quiet slap of water against the hull of her boat. Even her favored yacht is vanished beyond the horizon, to be found when she has need of it.

A corpse is laid out before her, head painstakingly reattatched to the body and resting in her lap. Denied her chance for grief when he fell, she will have it now, here, where only the sea and the night are greater in power. Stroking her fingers through the brittle hair she'd had to comb dirt out of, she leans down to press a brief kiss to cold, dead lips. She would have ignored all the rules if she had been there, and he would not be dead now. More fool her to let him convince her not to follow him, no matter she'd have had to walk the land.

Reaching out, she takes up the knife waiting for her, and reaches up to take the first lock of hair, cutting it as close to her scalp as she can. Strands part like water before the edge of the blade, silk-fine black falling around her steadily with each slice. Offering up her grief to the silent and dark skies and sea, to her Mother and Father, for the loss of her lover, her only equal.

Her wolf, born of steppe and wind, under a sky as endless as her own, with a sea of grass as boundless as the one of water they ride upon.

The knife is set aside only when air moves cool over her newly-bared scalp, and she draws a deep breath as she tilts her head back to stare at the pale stars. Close enough she could almost reach out to touch them, though she does not know what it could bring her, with her wolf silent and cold in her lap. Slain by the changing mortal world that encroaches ever more on sea and steppe, crowding out the wild places wolf and tempest roam.

"Give him back to me, or give me back to him." Her voice is hoarse, barely a whisper into the faint breeze. "Give us a place to run before the wind."

She will give her life, blood and bone and Quickening, for what she wants, to laugh as she races her wolf once more. For biting kisses and leaping flames, warm furs and lashing rain, wild grasses and towering waves. For the storm that dances on lightning legs and blots out the horizon, and sweeps them before it, glorying in their freedom and power.

Closing her eyes, she curls over to rest her forehead against his chest, tears silent and screams unvoiced as she reaches out to twine her fingers through his. The chill of lifeless flesh, the scent of rot under her nose, they do not matter. Only here, this moment, alone with grief and terrible prayers to the only gods she has ever acknowledged.


End file.
